Monday, July 13, 2015

The "Free Market" –
once again.

Congress seems poised to turn
its back on the "No Child Left Behind" educational
nightmare. But many of the supporters of this shift of direction in
educational policy are not particularly interested in providing a
good education for our children. They are interested in states
rights. They distrust the federal government. They are worshipers in
the church of the Free Market.

The belief in the blessings of
the free market are indeed a religion-- facts have nothing to do with
it. It is all a matter of faith.

But we live in the real world
where facts are available; we should certainly not ignore them.
Indifference to actual events regularly leads to disaster. If a truck
is bearing down on you, you'd better run. If your house is on fire,
you'd better leave. If your bank account is empty, you'd better not
write checks.

Hence it is important, from
time to time, to look at the reality of the free market. A couple of
examples of the gross malfunction of the free market have come to my
attention and I want to share them.

Both of them have to do with
the privatization of law enforcement. It is a well-known fact that
many prisons in the United States are run by private companies. The
two largest ones are Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and
GEO. It is also
well-known that "private
prison companies have indirectly supported policies that put more
Americans and immigrants behind bars – such as California's three
strikes rule and Arizona has highly controversial anti-illegal
immigration law." (Washington
Post
April 28, 2015)

It
is less well known that private prison corporations house almost half
of the
immigrants arrested as undocumented. Some immigrants who have been
held in these private detention facilities have recently sued GEO,
the company that owned a facility outside Denver, for being made to
do janitorial work in the facility for one dollar a day. The company
makes a huge profit by forcing inmates to do their own maintenance
and paying them a pittance.

People
in detention have not had a trial. Some of them are being detained
without justification. One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit agaainst
GEO was, in fact, a legal resident of the United States. He suddenly
found himself being practically enslaved, having to work for next to
no pay cleaning toilets and washing floors. That clearly violates the
most basic standards of how residents of the United States should be
treated. Even if it turns out that the persons detained do
not have
the requisite documents, they still should not be subject to forced
unpaid labor before they have had a trial and have been sentenced.

Our cash strapped cities could
significantly improve their bottom line, if police would go around
arresting citizens who, while detained, were forced to work for
nothing, for instance cleaning streets, hauling garbage, and doing
other undesirable work for practically no pay. There would be a major
uproar if we did this to citizens. The fact that this is being done
to people, accused of being illegal immigrants, does not make it any
less outrageous.

Another
example of the failure of privatization: some municipalities in
Alabama and elsewhere have farmed out their collection of traffic
fines to a private collection company, Judicial Corrections Services.
This company collects payments on traffic fines and every time they
get a payment they collect
an additional
$40 fee from the person paying.

The
victims of this scam had been in court and the judge imposed a fine
on them. But the $40 fee is charged on
top of the fine
imposed by the court. It has no legal justiification.

This
particular arrangement disproportionately burdens poor people who are
unable to pay large fines at one time and therefore have to pay their
fines in installments. JCS adds their $40 fee to every installment
paid.

The government establishes
certain rules, such as traffic and parking rules, and attaches a
schedule of punishments for violators. It is essential that
government be impartial, that no private party profit from government
actions. Where that impartiality is violated and government action
brings profit to private individuals, we speak of corruption. Where
ever private parties enrich themselves by using the power of
government they are corrupting those powers.

For-profit companies collecting
fees for fulfilling government functions are one more example of
clear corruption. It is no different from the policeman who accepts a
bribe for not writing a ticket, or the government bureaucrat who
needs to get paid under the table in order to process a form.

The blessing of the free
market, in this instance, is in fact the corruption of our
government. Justice falls victim to private enrichment.